A playwright and novelist raised in Davenport, Iowa, Glaspell was a central figure in the revolutionary Little Theater movement of the early twentieth century. In her lifetime, Glaspell was considered as important a writer and theatrical pioneer as her colleague and contemporary, Eugene O’Neill. Like many midwestern artists of the time, she fled the repressive culture she found in the Midwest and joined the thriving community of artists and writers living a bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. There, she began writing plays. When she was unsuccessful in having her subtle, character-driven plays produced (Broadway was showing only overproduced melodramas), she and her husband George Cram Cook decided to stage plays on their own. While vacationing in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in July 1915, they presented their collaboratively written play Suppressed Desires in the summer cottage of their friends Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood; it was the first production of the Provincetown Players. Glaspell participated in all aspects of the company’s work—from writing to acting to set building. She also solicited plays, including work from the then-unknown playwright, Eugene O’Neill. Later, as his fame grew, many credited Glaspell with "discovering" O’Neill.